Azaranica is a non-biased news aggregator on Hazaras and Hazarajat...The main aim is to promote understanding and respect for cultural identities by highlighting the realities they are facing on daily basis...Hazaras have been the victim of active persecution and discrimination and one of the reasons among many has been the lack of information, awareness and disinformation...... To further awareness against violence, disinformation and discrimination, we have launched a sister Blog for youths and youths are encouraged to share their stories and opinions; Young Pens

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Sophisticated people-smuggling syndicates charging thousands of dollars to ferry asylum seekers from Afghanistan to Australia are preying on Hazara communities in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide.

The syndicates charge clients $12,000 for the trip and are believed to have generated tens of millions of dollars in the past two years, The Age newspaper reported on Saturday.

A well-placed source in the Afghan community told the newspaper this week:

Advertisement: Story continues below "The syndicates are an open secret within the Hazara community.

"Everybody knows who runs them, who to approach and who makes the money.

"It is astonishing they can operate so openly."

The largest Australian-based smuggling operation is believed to operate out of nondescript shop fronts in Dandenong, in Melbourne's south-east, home to thousands of Afghan refugees, including many of Hazara ethnicity.

The top smugglers have Australian citizenship and travel unimpeded between Australia and Afghanistan, it is claimed.

The smugglers boast they can reunite family and friends with relatives living in Australia within months, if not weeks.

QUETTA, Pakistan — Ten people including four policemen were injured Saturday when a car bomb targeting a senior police official exploded in the southwestern city of Quetta, police said.

The bomb, planted in a Suzuki car, exploded as a police vehicle carrying Shaban Ali passed through the heart of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas rich Baluchistan province, senior police official Hamid Shakeel told AFP.

"At least 10 people including four policemen and and six passers-by were wounded in the attack targeting Shaban Ali, who remained unhurt." Shakeel said.

He added that nobody has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Local security officials, who declined to be identified, also confirmed the incident.

Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, has seen an upswing in violence recently, with the province suffering from a separatist insurgency, sectarian violence and Taliban militants.

Hundreds of people have died since rebels rose up in 2004 demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural oil, gas and mineral resources.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Enthused by the response of Indian metal and mining giants for developing the Hajigak iron ore mine in Afghanistan, the Hamid Karzai government has shortlisted 15 of them for competitive bidding process for the mine to begin soon.

A total of 22 companies had confirmed their Expression of Interests (EoI) to the Afghan government for exploring the Hajigak mine, located in the Bamiyan province of the country.

High grade iron ore reserves of the mine is estimated to be about 1.8 billion tonnes.

An estimated expenditure of about Rs 10,000 crore is required to develop the mine and its peripheral infrastructure for evacuation of the mineral.

In a letter on January 17, Afghan mines minister Wahidullah Shahrani said of the 22 firms shortlisted for the coming bidding process, 15 are Indian companies.

Interestingly, Iranian firms like Gol-e-Gohar Iron Ore and Behin Sanate Diba have also tendered their EoI.

In his letter, Shahrani said his ministry was in the process of finalising the bidder’s package for all the phases of the process. “It is anticipated that the bidder’s due diligence period will start around March 1, 2011 and extend at least through August 3, 2011. We appreciate your interest in the Hajigak project and look forward to receiving a competitive bid from you,” the Afghan mines minister said.

Soviet era studies reveal that the said mine was amendable to open pit mining methods. In the EoI floated recently, the Afghanistan government said it would conduct a bidding process for multiple exploration concessions, and the selected bidder would be granted mineral concessions under the Afghan Mineral Law 2010.

The Afghan government is also keen that the Indian companies set up steel and other iron ore processing plants near Hajigak. The country is believed to be sitting on over $2.5 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits. It has huge copper mines in Balkhab and Aynak areas.

Shahrani had met Indian mines ministry officials in November last and expressed his country’s desire to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between both the nations to promote mining and end use industries back in Afghanistan.

The ministry of external affairs too has been asking the mines ministry to evaluate the response from the Indian companies.

NEW DELHI — President Hamid Karzai inaugurated Afghanistan’s newly elected parliament on Wednesday, a concession by him that adds weight to the increasingly assertive legislative branch.

Mr. Karzai had tried to delay the convening of the new parliament until a special court finished investigating allegations of election fraud. The victorious candidates – as of today, sitting parliamentarians – had argued the court was unconstitutional and that they would convene with or without the president’s blessing. Key international players appeared to back the new parliament, prompting Karzai to complain about “foreign hands” stoking the crisis.

Since Karzai’s fraud-marred reelection, lawmakers have successfully challenged more of his major decisions, holding out the prospect of diverse power centers competing inside the constitutional process, rather than just on the battlefield. Yet the parliament remains weak, and this particular standoff with Karzai may not be over.

“There are so many issues not resolved: What will be the role of the special court, whether [its] decisions will be binding or not, and how to implement the decisions,” says Shahmahmood Miakhel, country director for the United States Institute of Peace in Kabul. “So we can not say this is the end of the story.”

Special deals with the special court?
Statements from Karzai indicate that he thinks a deal was struck with parliamentarians to allow the special court to continue its investigation and to abide by its findings, expected in February. But legislative leaders appear to be saying something different.

“There is no special agreement between MPs and President Karzai on the special court,” says Fawzia Kofi, a reelected MP from Badakhshan. “The agreement was that cases of criminal issues related to elections should be dealt according to the law – the Constitution, and electoral law, and the regular courts – not the special court.”

However, MPs have a certain amount of immunity under the law. Ms. Kofi says the immunity does not extend to “obvious crimes” like murder and bribes, but simply protects free speech. Mr. Miakhel, however, notes that the courts have to seek permission from the leadership of parliament before pursuing criminal cases against MPs.

Kofi says she expects that the new parliament will vote quickly to abolish the special court. The court was appointed by the Supreme Court, a body widely seen as beholden to Karzai. Parliamentarians have also noted that the group tasked under law to address election violations – the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) – has already passed judgment on the 2,648 top priority complaints.

But roughly 200 losing candidates have kept up steady protests of the official election results certified by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and have pinned their hopes on the special court.

Stronger opposition presence in parliament
Research on the winning candidates conducted by the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies found that “as a result of strict control, monitoring, and observation of IEC and ECC, the government was not able to bring many pro-government candidates.” Instead, opposition groups now have a stronger presence in this parliament than in the previous one.

But the center’s director, Waliullah Rahmani, cautions that “it doesn’t mean that we will have a stronger opposition group inside the parliament. [The] study shows that these groups and figures are fragmented.”

The study found that 51 percent of the new parliamentarians are “independent,” a group that Karzai’s government might find easier to sway. The lack of strong political parties has left a high number of independents and little cohesion among lawmakers, rendering the parliament generally weak.

The largest ethnic group, Pashtuns, won 96 out of the 249 seats – a proportion slightly lower than some demographic estimates would predict if voting followed purely ethnic lines. The Hazara minority group punched far above its weight, winning 61 seats.

This was dramatically demonstrated in Ghazni Province, which is split demographically between Pashtuns and minority groups, but which sent all Hazaras and no Pashtuns to parliament this time. The most visible leader of the 200 losing candidates, Daoud Sultanzai, hails from Ghazni.

Parliament’s ethnic proportions have made some Afghans like Karzai nervous about further alienation of Pashtuns, the core group from which the insurgency draws its ranks. But others like Mr. Rahmani point out that those who peacefully participate in the democratic process should reap some benefits.

“This is what we can call a reward for democracy. I believe Pashtuns will understand that when there is high turnout, then they can get the reward, like what the Hazaras did in Afghanistan,” says Rahmani, who is a Hazara and whose brother won a seat in parliament from Ghazni Province.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

With the negotiations for the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) oil pipeline reaching a successful outcome and the security situation within the country taking a turn for the better over the last quarter of 2010, Afghanistan is now moving ahead on a path of national development. On Wednesday it invited 22 companies, including 15 from India, to bid for the development of its giant Hajigak iron ore deposits.

The country's ministry for mines has set 3 August 2011 as the deadline for bids for what it says is the largest un-mined iron deposit in Asia. It said it expected exploration to begin in 2012.

The Hajigak deposit straddles Bamiyan, Parwan and Wardak provinces.

The ministry estimates the worth of its reserves at as much as $350 billion.

The country's Mines Ministry set Aug. 3, 2011 as the deadline for bids for what it says is the largest unmined iron deposit in Asia. It said it expected exploration to begin in 2012, pressing ahead with the project despite security concerns weighing on investors.

The Hajigak deposit straddles Bamiyan, Parwan and Wardak provinces, with only Bamiyan relatively peaceful. The ministry estimates the worth of its reserves at as much as $350 billion.

The United States has trumpeted Afghanistan's rich mineral deposits as the key to future prosperity, but experts say the bounty is years, even decades away and point to massive security and infrastructure challenges for potential investors.

Violence in Afghanistan is at it worst since U.S-backed forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 with record casualties on all sides and a raging insurgency spreading to once-peaceful areas of the country.

The government has a specially trained force to protect mines and other infrastructure, with many of its members drawn from villages surrounding the asset under guard.

The ministry said the interested companies included India's Jindal Steel and Power Ltd , JSW Steel , Tata Steel , NMDC , Steel Authority of India and Ispat Industries . UK-based Stemcor was also named, as well as Canadian-based Kilo Goldmines Ltd .

"The development of Hajigak will involve major infrastructure improvements and will stimulate the local economy and improve and lives of the citizens of Bamiyan province and beyond," Mines Minister Wahidullah Shahrani said in a statement.

United Mining and Minerals Co. was the only Chinese company on the list, the ministry said.

China's top integrated copper producer, Jiangxi Copper Co , and Metallurgical Corp of China are developing the vast Aynak copper mine south of Kabul after they were handed the contract in 2007. The $4 billion project is the biggest non-military investment in the country so far.

Metallurgical Corp pulled out of an earlier tender for Hajigak in 2009 following accusations it had won the Aynak contract by giving bribes. The firm denied the charges.

The Mines Ministry cancelled the tender, blaming the cancellation on the global recession and changes in the world market structure for iron. (Reporting by Matt Robinson, additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi, editing by Miral Fahmy)

(If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)

KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday delayed the incoming parliament's opening by a month to give a tribunal more time to investigate fraud allegations, as the conflict over controversial legislative elections intensified.

Former Afghan lawmakers listen to Sediqullah Haqiq, head of a tribunal investigating alleged fraud during last year's election, in Kabul Wednesday.
Mr. Karzai has repeatedly criticized the new parliament, which was scheduled to convene for the first time Sunday, as unrepresentative because it doesn't allocate enough seats to the country's biggest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun who created the special court last month to review fraud claims by losing candidates, agreed to that court's request for the delay just hours after it was made.

The president's move puts him at odds with the United Nations and the U.S.-led coalition, which have accepted as final the election's results, as certified by Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission in December.

The IEC and the U.N.-backed watchdog, the Electoral Complaints Commission, are refusing to cooperate with the special court, saying the judges have no legal authority to interfere with election results under the Afghan constitution. Mr. Karzai on Wednesday ordered all Afghan government bodies to collaborate with the inquiry.

Over the past year, the Afghan parliament has emerged as a check on Mr. Karzai's powers, vetoing his ministerial candidates and opposing several of his policies. The new parliament's composition is seen as even more hostile to Mr. Karzai. Some Western diplomats say the Afghan president's true goal is to weaken the new legislature—and to keep it from convening for as long as possible.

Delaying the inauguration "is something that will hurt the legitimacy and the credibility of the new parliament," said Haroun Mir, the director of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament himself.

Western diplomats said representatives of the international community will gather Thursday to discuss how to react to Mr. Karzai's move. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said its views on the election are reflected by last month's U.N. Security Council statement, which welcomed the election commission's certification of the results and urged "all Afghan institutions act within their clearly defined areas of competence, in accordance with the relevant laws and the Afghan Constitution."

The Sept. 18 parliamentary election had the lowest turnout of any Afghan election since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001. While international observers agree there was widespread fraud, they say the electoral commission behaved far more professionally last year than in the 2009 presidential election.

Afghanistan's attorney general, a close ally of Mr. Karzai, is seeking criminal charges against top IEC and ECC officials for their alleged involvement in fraud during the parliamentary vote.

More
U.S. Slows Afghan Security-Force Expansion Gains by Taliban Open Door to Opium Revival The special court's request to delay the parliament's opening was made on the last day of orientation for incoming Afghan lawmakers, a session held in Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel. Winning candidates shunned the remaining seminars to gather in the hallways, talking in hushed and angry tones about how to mobilize their protesters.

"Democracy isn't a toy to be played with—people risked their lives to vote," said winning incumbent Shinkai Karokhail, elected from Kabul.

Incoming lawmakers said they are worried that the political crisis will spill onto the streets of Afghanistan's major cities, pitting Pashtuns against the country's minorities, such as the Hazaras, who are well-represented in the new legislature. In the Pashtun-majority Ghazni province, for example, all 11 elected lawmakers are Hazaras, largely because the Taliban have succeeded in derailing the vote in most Pashtun villages.

It isn't clear how the special court will carry out its investigations, as both the IEC and the ECC said they won't share any information with the judges, referring them instead to the election commissions' websites.

The special court's chairman, Sediqullah Haqiq, raised the possibility that the entire election may be thrown out. "We have received complaints from all the provinces, and in each province people complained about fraud," he said Wednesday, speaking in a courtroom packed with losing parliamentary candidates.

In the eastern Paktika province, meanwhile, a roadside bomb Wednesday killed 13 Afghan civilians, including women and children, officials said. Paktika is one of the provinces most heavily affected by the Taliban, who routinely plant roadside explosive devices as they target coalition and Afghan forces.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Western analysts believe that since Afghanistan has not been stable after nine years of NATO presence, therefore, what is needed is the partitioning of Afghanistan. However, Robert Blackwill proposes the implementation of an old solution, the creation of a new state, Pashtunistan

The debate about the dismemberment or de facto partition of Afghanistan has intensified in intellectual and media forums in both Asia and Europe. During the past two decades, ethnic cleansing and sectarian terrorism has prepared the ground for a future civil war in the country. Ethnic clashes between Kochis and Hazaras, among Uzbeks, Pashtuns and Tajiks still continued while sexual harassment, abduction, land-grabbing and mental torture of Pashtuns is on the rise in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. National unity and national integration has become an old story. Based on these facts, Afghanistan is a failed state, a state without political control and economic progress.

The present state structure that cannot protect the weak and vulnerable citizens in Afghanistan needs to be either reorganised or entirely changed to create ethnic, political and religious concordance. All ethnic minorities have complaints against the present structure of the state, which cannot meet their needs and cannot protect them from violence. As there is no legitimate functioning state in the country, non-state actors have become a dominant power that run illegal trade in all provinces. The last two decades of civil war entirely destroyed Afghanistan as a functioning state. In the 1980s, mujahideen groups destroyed infrastructure. In the 1990s, the Taliban made their way to power and destroyed all institutions. Now warlords in northern Afghanistan are deeply involved in ethnic cleansing.

The power of the warlords, their private military networks and their private security firms present the biggest challenge to the country’s rehabilitation as a functioning state. War criminals are trying to maintain their criminal militias and keep the state weak. They and their western partners have bypassed the Afghan state. Brutalities against Pashtuns in the north and the targeting of Hazaras in the south are a greater challenge for both the Afghan government and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Over the last 10 years, the Hazarajat region saw a series of reprisal killings. In 1997 alone, the Taliban killed over 6,000 Hazara Muslims in retaliation for the execution of thousands of Taliban prisoners in northern Afghanistan.

However, warlords belonging to the Hazara and Uzbek communities attack the houses of Pashtuns at night, and humiliate their women and elders. These war criminals looted, raped and killed over 60,000 innocent men and women in Kabul in the 1990s. With the coming of ISAF led by the US, warlords got the license of more killings across the country. Kochis kill Hazaras in the south, Hazara and Uzbek are killing Pashtuns in the north, and Taliban have been killing all ethnic groups across Afghanistan for the last 10 years.

Consequently, thousands of Hazaras from the Hazarajat region and thousands of Pashtuns from Balkh, Faryab and Kunduz provinces fled their villages. Armed political groups in the north are subjecting Pashtuns to murder, rape, beating, abduction and extortion. The state is not able to rehabilitate the internally displaced refugees returned from Pakistan and Iran. If we go into the last five decades’ internal displacement history of the country, we will find more stories about different displacements having occurred at different times. At present, more than 500,000 Afghans are internally displaced and one million are still living in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran. They lost their houses and there is no housing industry in the country to help re-house the returnees. From 2005-2010, thousands of refugees returned from Pakistan, but war, torture, severity of drought and harassment forced them to go back. As they are illiterate and unskilled, they can make no contribution to Pakistan’s institutions.

At present, there is no national concord, no critical infrastructure — water, health, education, employment, security, food, housing, etc. They see no change in their life after the Soviet withdrawal and US invasion. The Afghan nation is scattered into pieces. The Hazaras of Bamyan, Wardak and Daykundi are different from the Pashtuns of the south in culture, language and religious orientation. They can be compared to the Kurds in Iraq. The same can be seen in the Tajiks of Badakhshan and the Pashtuns of Kandahar. The Tajiks are spread from the border of Tajikistan to Kabul and from Badakhshan to Herat. They believe that all their problems are due to the Pashtun misgovernance and their past 350-year brutal rule. Nationalistic notions are stronger among the Tajiks today. As we have experienced in the case of the education ministry in 2007, Persian-speaking communities are more attached to Iran and Tajikistan culturally and linguistically. Their political and sectarian affiliations to these states caused more problems in the country.

The last two decades of civil war have accumulated all the elements of ethnicity and religious extremism. This war encompasses two rival groups and their struggles: one is the Taliban and their resolve for dominance; and the other is the Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks who seek identity and equal representation. They say they are not Afghan, but Tajik, Uzbek and Turkmen. The word Afghan, they say, means Pashtun. Moreover, major ethnic groups in Afghanistan are competing for power. As there is no national concord in the country, in the words of former US Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Blackwill, Afghanistan should be allowed to partition along ethnic lines.

Western analysts believe that since Afghanistan has not been stable after nine years of NATO presence, therefore, what is needed is the partitioning of Afghanistan. However, Robert Blackwill proposes the implementation of an old solution, the creation of a new state, Pashtunistan. “This solution would prevent civil war in Pakistan and solidify the government’s authority and in Afghanistan the loss of the eastern part of the nation would allow for real reconstruction to begin,” he said. Political analysts believe that, being already divided on linguistic lines, Afghanistan appears to be moving towards a permanent dismemberment.

They believe that the process of partition began before the arrival of Taliban on the political scene. Afghan ethnic minorities apparently have no fear of their fellow Tajiks and Uzbeks living across the border. Minorities who dominate the northern provinces opened routes towards Central Asia, imported electricity and gas and created political links with the states of Central Asia and Iran. But they will not be allowed to settle there. Over 90 percent of young people in northern Afghanistan are illiterate, suffering from HIV/AIDS or drug addiction. The Taliban infiltration into Central Asia and their operations in Chechnya and Ingushetia can divert the attention of Russia towards a new buffer state that will divide Afghanistan on ethnic lines.

The writer, author of Britain’s National Security Challenges, is based in London and can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Steven Glass, a lawyer for Hazara asylum seekers (”One man’s struggle to find a safe place to live”, December 29), writes that many Afghans consider the Hazara ”foreigners” and ”infidels”. That may be so, but the statement belies the considerable improvement in the condition of the Hazara minority in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

For the first time in Afghanistan’s history, the 2004 constitution gives the courts the right to apply Shia jurisprudence in family matters involving Shia Muslims. As the largest group of Shia in Afghanistan, the Hazara consider this a major victory.

A Shia personal status law was adopted in 2009. Although some regarded it as an excessive codification of family matters, all Shia MPs supported it as a recognition of minority rights.

An area populated by Hazara was declared a new province in 2004 (Daikundi in the central region, adjacent to Bamiyan, the other main Hazara province).

During the last elections the Hazara won 59 of 249 seats in the lower house. This is quite an achievement for a minority estimated to constitute 10 per cent of the population.

Individual Hazara have held, or are holding, high political office. One of the country’s two vice-presidents is a Hazara, and so was the minister for justice from 2004 until last June. The head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission since it was established in 2002 is also a Hazara.

Legal and institutional recognition does not always translate into practice. Like all Afghans, the Hazara live in a country racked by violence, uncertainty and corruption. However, the Hazara have become politically more assertive, are moving into higher education in what appears to be unprecedented numbers, and, in Kabul, many have entered the new middle class that has

AUSTRALIA has the green light to deport thousands of Afghan asylum seekers after reaching a historic agreement with the Afghan government.

The Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Afghan Refugee Minister, Jamaher Anwary, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Sydney yesterday.

It enables the forced return of Afghans whose bids for asylum fail. The move is alarming security experts and refugee advocates.

Mr Bowen said it would deter Afghans considering travelling to Australia. ''Never, all through the Howard years, never before today, has there been an involuntary return from Australia to Afghanistan,'' he said.

''To dissuade people from risking their lives by joining people-smuggling ventures, it is important that Afghans found not to be owed protection by Australia are returned to Afghanistan."

About 2600 Afghans are in Australia's detention centres. Of those, 49 must win court appeals to avoid imminent deportation.

The opposition was sceptical about the agreement, saying it was only as good as the government's will to enforce it. ''The minister is unable to say when anyone is going to be returned,'' said its immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison. ''It's not clear to me the government has the resolve to implement this.''

In three years, only three asylum seekers have been returned to Afghanistan - all last year after volunteering to go. In 2008 and 2009, 126 people were returned to their countries of origin.

The director of the Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, William Maley, warned that ethnic Hazaras, in particular, should not be deported without extreme caution. ''The security situation in Afghanistan is extremely unsettling,'' he said.

He cast doubt on the security expertise of Australian officials making refugee assessments.

The decapitation of 11 Hazaras in Oruzgan province in June contradicted a cable from the Kabul embassy proclaiming a ''golden age'' for Hazaras, he said.

The Refugee Council of Australia was concerned by the lack of safeguards the memorandum provided for returned asylum seekers. ''In Afghanistan, people are not so much under threat from actions by government but the actions of people who the government cannot, or chooses not to, control,'' said the chief executive, Paul Power.

The Australian government has promised money to help Afghanistan improve its passport system and accommodation for returned asylum seekers. The UN has agreed to ad hoc monitoring.

Afghanistan still feels utterly new and fantastically complex. The dynamics, geography and people are completely different from Iraq, different really than anywhere I’ve ever been. As I spend more time here, I feel the war becoming more intricate, more complicated. Some of what is attributed to the Taliban is simply Afghan culture. Much of the war in Afghanistan is a war with the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Af-Pak border. Yet there are other non-Pashtun groups fighting us all over the country — groups that are lumped together as Taliban when, in fact, they have nothing in common save for an antipathy towards coalition forces.

•

In early December, Alissa J. Rubin, The Times’s bureau chief in Kabul, takes me along on a visit to meet with the public affairs team at the International Security Assistance Force. I’m skeptical at first, but they turn out to be a smart, slightly ironic bunch who are tremendously helpful in getting us to where we want to go and furnishing us with updates. There is little of the mutual distrust I felt between the press and the military in Iraq. Weeks later, though, a high-ranking officer will call to complain about my written coverage: a quote from a Taliban spokesman has particularly incensed him.

•

Michael Kamber
Photographers at War

Interviews with:

Teru Kuwayama
Joao Silva
Stanley Greene
Tim Hetherington
Patrick Baz
Alissa and I take a day trip up to the Panjshir Valley, home of the legendary Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan commander who fought the Russians to a standstill for a decade, then later led the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. The Panjshir is extraordinarily beautiful: clear mountain streams and green rolling valleys. You can still see Russian markings on the destroyed armored personnel carriers that litter the roadside.

Massoud read Mao and Che Guevara, and was once offered a scholarship to study in France. I expect to find the Panjshiri women “liberated.” (I had an argument with a close relative in New York before I left. “We’re liberating the women from the Taliban,” she had said.) In the Panjshir, a bastion of anti-Taliban sentiment, it quickly becomes clear that the Taliban are not the only impediment to women’s liberation.

The Panjshiris will not let me enter the village where I want to work; there are women in the village and I cannot lay eyes on them. I set my camera to auto and give it to our female translator. I go with the driver to the local kebab house. There are probably 100 men inside in the sweet smoky room, not a woman in sight. Outside, the women navigate the road in burkas down to their ankles.

A Panjshiri man tells me: “The Russians were terrible. They came into my house with guns in the middle of the night, in front of my wife!” I think back to the night raids in Logar that I photographed in 2009, the women and children led out into the pasture as the men were handcuffed and led away.

•

A friend in Ivory Coast e-mails me: the ultranationalist government, refusing to relinquish power after losing the election, is once again blaming the foreign press for its troubles. They have put photos of the journalists on state-run TV, a potential death sentence in this climate. The Ivorians have killed at least two foreign journalists in recent years. Many of the journalists have gone into hiding. Long distance, we worry for one another’s safety.

•

In Ghazni Province in mid-December, the Third Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne is in a daily fight with the Taliban. The soldiers have suffered 25 percent casualties since September. In the Hazara part of their district, there has never been a single attack upon them. In the Pashtun half, they are attacked as often as several times a day. Out of 100,000 Pashtun residents, exactly three voted in September’s parliamentary election. The Hazaras voted, and now control all the parliamentary seats for the province.

I pull on my flak jacket. The steel and ceramic cocoon offers an odd reassurance. We climb into massive, heavily armored vehicles. That which keeps us safe also separates us from the population.

Beside me, an Afghan, clearly an interpreter, introduces himself in accented English as Bob.

“What’s your real name?” I ask him.

“My name’s Omid. But on the first day at this job, the sergeant asked me my ‘terp’ name. I told him: ‘I don’t have a terp name. My name is Omid.’

” ‘Omid is too complicated for us to remember,’ he told me. ‘From now on, your name is Bob.’ ”

Michael Kamber for The New York Times

Dec. 16: Members of Bravo Company on a humanitarian assistance patrol in Ghazni Province distributed crank-powered radios, books, candy and drinks.
•

For most of the day, I watch and photograph as the Americans crawl in armored vehicles through fields in search of insurgents zipping about on motorcycles; as impoverished villagers step from their adobe homes to gape at the millions of dollars in American hardware bogged in their narrow mud lanes; as 19-year-old soldiers — abroad for the first time in their lives — swarm ancient compounds, finding bomb-making materials in haystacks and interrogating white-bearded Afghan elders.

It is an astonishing spectacle, bordering on the surreal at times. It is the very front line of the war in Afghanistan. A man in a turban drives by on a motorbike; his wife or daughter, draped in a baby-blue burka, sitting sidesaddle on the back.

“It’s like we are on the moon,” a soldier says. “Is there any place in the world more completely opposite to where we come from?”

That night, a sergeant is telling a story about talking to local villagers.

“I told the guy: ‘You think this is nice? This ain’t nothing! Where I live, I drive my car up to my house, press a magic button and a door opens up in the side of my house. I drive my car inside. Where I live, even my car has its own room! If you would just stop shooting at us, you could have that, too.’ ”

•

A few days later, at an Afghan government press conference, officials take the opportunity to press repeatedly for more economic aid and development from the West. An Afghan journalist turns to me with a laugh. “The U.S. is a big milky cow. We just milk it and milk it and milk it.”

•

In the middle of a January night, I’m standing in a wooden shack on an air base in Helmand, trying to get on a flight to remote Sangin District, where the fighting is heavy. The door opens and a face peers around the corner at me. It is Teru Kuwayama, another photojournalist. The last time I saw him, we were drinking beer on a warm Brooklyn night and arguing about the role of the media.

We embrace and talk for an hour or so in the darkness. Then I board a plane and fly off into the night. Teru will take a flight the next morning in another direction.

A new agreement between Australia and Afghanistan paves the way for the first forced return of Afghans who are deemed not to be refugees. And if that happens, they are likely to be from the persecuted Hazara minority because they form the majority of Afghan arrivals in Australia. Australia claims Afghanistan is now safer for Hazara people. But analysts say Australia's refugee determination process is based on poor information and that is dramatically underplaying the dangers and potentially exposing forced returnees to unacceptable risks.

MOTTRAM: Jamaher Amwary is Afghanistan's minister for Refugees and Repatriation. A big job, since his country has more refugees than any other.

AMWARY: (speaking in Pashto)

MOTTRAM: But at the signing in Sydney on Monday of the new memorandum of understanding between his country and Australia, Dr Amwary pledged that with Australia's help, Afghanistan would work to stop the people smuggler traffic and boats destined for Australia that have so agitated Australia's political debate.

For Australia, the immigration minister, Chris Bowen, signed the memorandum and stressed that Afghanistan's agreement to accept forced returns would send a message to the people smugglers.

BOWEN: No longer will people smugglers be able to tell people that even if they are not regarded as a genuine refugee, there is no mechanism for the Australian government to return them to Afghanistan. That is no longer the case. This is a sustainable and robust approach, which treats people with dignity but makes it clear that the end result of not being regarded as a refugee [...] is return to Afghanistan.

MOTTRAM: Australia for its part will provide limited reintegration assistance to returnees and also help improve Afghan government services like the country's corrupted passport system.

Lending its weight to the deal, the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, also signed on.

Expert on refugees and on Afghanistan, Professor William Maley of the Australian National University, says the memorandum does have some important provisions.

MALEY: One is that it requires that cases be assessed not simply in terms of refugee convention obligation of protection but also against instruments such as the convention against torture as well as against compelling humanitarian need.

MOTTRAM: That means better prospects to have cases approved, especially for about 200 unaccompanied Afghan children who are currently in Australian detention. In addition, a recent court victory in Australia has required that all asylum seekers get access to judicial review.

But it's less the new memorandum and more the Australian government's processes for assessing refugee claims in the first place that concerns Professor Maley.

MALEY: That's partly because the government has had to pull in all sorts of people with relatively minimum training in recent times to undertake assessments and one wonders whether the people who are doing these kinds of assessments really have a good smell and feel of what the situation on the ground in Afghanistan is like.

MOTTRAM: Not only are those officers ill equipped for their task - as rejection rates for Afghans grow - they are, Professor Maley says, labouring under a questionable Australian claim that security has improved in Afghanistan, especially for the persecuted minority Hazaras, who make up most of the Afghan refugee claimants in Australia.

And just last year Professor Maley says there was particularly gruesome evidence of that.

MALEY: Eleven Hazaras in June 2010 were decapitated in the province of Oruzgan, where Australian troops are deployed, and their bodies were left by the roadside and those who are making decisions in cases of this sort need to think very carefully about whether they would even possibly be exposing somebody to the risk of that kind of treatment.

MOTTRAM: Ethnic Hazara, Younus Noori, made the dangerous boat journey to Australia from Indonesia in 2000, fleeing the Taliban's threats. Eventually granted asylum in Australia, he now works, studies and raises his family in Adelaide. He can barely describe how dangerous his journey was, but during a visit to Canberra said the dangers still facing Hazaras were so much greater that nothing would stop them taking the trip.

NOORI: This is the most difficult and the most horrible journey that you can ever feel coming to Australia by boat. But the problem is that when the people are inside like a kind of a burning house, whenever they see a hole, they hope that they can go through and get out of that and they will try to use that.

MOTTRAM: Australia claims no one will be returned to face persecution. And with 49 of the 2600 Afghans currently in Australian detention having had their cases rejected at two reviews, Chris Bowen, the minister, says forced returns could come within the year. But with the international community advocating a deal with the Taliban as part of a political settlement in Afghanistan, Hazaras fear they are facing the prospect of much more - not less - persecution.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

If you’re into picturesque views and history, then you’ll certainly love Bamiyan Afghanistan. This picturesque locale is considered 1 with the places that tourists should never miss seeing or visiting when within the country because it is the site of several ruined Buddha statues that had been destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. These statues have been close to for centuries and stood the test of time but had been not able to withstand the ravages of war between religions within the country.

To obtain to Bamiyan, you are able to go by road from Kabul. Whenever you venture into this region, attempt to blend in by with the assist of a scarf covering your head, your mouth and your nose. Aside from keeping your self inconspicuous, this also helps keep the dust out of your nose and mouth because these routes are frequently rough and extremely dusty. You will be able to get to Bamiyan via a shared 4WD minivan that can seat around five to ten people. The drive to Bamiyan generally takes close to 9 hours.

Whenever you get to Bamiyan town, aside from the well-known ruined Buddhas, you will probably be in a position to see just how badly war has torn some of the city apart. You can see many weapons that were left behind, jeeps that have been destroyed and buildings and houses which are now part of the ruins around these destroyed Buddhas. You can also visit the Shahr-e Gholghola, which is a fort that may give you majestic views of the valley below because it’s discovered high above the town.

To experience the cuisine that the locals enjoy, you might want to attempt what is known as pulao and naan. You can purchase these rice, vegetable and mutton stews and nearby flat breads from what are known as chaikhanas and you are able to wash down these delicious nearby fare with lots of green tea that’s also being sold by these extremely same vendors.

Friday, January 14, 2011

9 hours drive from Kabul, at the heart of the Hindu Kush, lies the valley of
Bamiyan. It is surely one of the most beautiful of all Afghanistan. Moreover, its
position and fertility led to the establishment of a trading post on the Silk Road
almost 2000 years ago. It subsequently grew to become an important
Buddhist centre with many monasteries and hundreds of monks. Around the
1st Century AD, a Central Asian nomadic tribe, the Kushans, established
themselves in Afghanistan. Around the end of the 1st century AD their king
was a man called Kanishka who adopted Mahayana Buddhism – which
revered the Buddha as a man as much as a God. Previously Buddha had only
been represented symbolically but under Kanishka the first images of Buddha
the man appeared. The fusing of an Indian artistic style with that of the
Greek-Bactrians led to the so-called ‘Graeco-Buddhic’ art – and the two great
Buddhas of Bamiyan were examples of this.
On completion, the two tallest were 55metres (9m taller than the Statue of
Liberty) and 38m high – an accomplishment that may have taken two hundred
years to achieve. By the time of their first record in 400 AD by a Chinese
Buddhist pilgrim they were covered in a mud and straw mixture to model the
face, hands and robes. The large Buddha was painted red, the smaller blue.
Both had hands and a face of gold. Alongside the Buddhas were excavated
dozens of caves, in which lived monks and other devotees.
Islam had arrived in Bamiyan by the 10th Century but the Buddhas remained
relatively unscathed, even after Genghis Khan in 1222 stormed the valley and,
in response to the killing of his grandson, killed every living thing in the valley.
This destruction marked the end of Bamiyan as a key trade point for centuries
but when the area slowly repopulated it did so with an increasing mix of
Mongol blood – and simultaneously added Shia Islam to the region’s religions.
The people of the area became known as Hazara – and the area (known as
Hazarajat) remained independent of the Afghan state until 1893. It revolted
against the Afghan communist government in 1978 but then came under
Soviet control until struggling free in 1981. The area was stricken with internal
division until the 1990 creation of the Hizb-e Wadhat party initially led by
Abdul Ali Mazari and then, after his mysterious death at the hands of the
Taliban, by Karim Khalili.
During the Taliban period, Bamiyan changed hands several times resulting in
great destruction and civilian casualties. Worse, the Taliban blockaded the
Shia Hazaras adding to the woes of the terrible drought. International attention
turned back to Bamiyan and the Hazara when, in March 2001, Mullah Omah
declared the Buddhas idolatrous and ordered them destroyed once and for all.
Only rubble remains.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

All good things are worth waiting for! Pataka Museum has just taken delivery of the Bamiyan exhibition book from the printers in China.
This full colour, 204 page book with its beautiful page layouts of virtually all the images from the recent Bamiyan exhibition is an absolute stunner!
Relive the experience, savour the images of the people of Bamiyan. Recall the history of the region, review the scenic sights and historic sites. Drool over Chris Weisserborn's remarkable panoramic images, revisit the work of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, enjoy the children's artwork, savour again the photographs of Pedram Pirnia and ponder the words and thoughts of the local interviewees.
Every aspect of the stimulating exhibition that was visited by over 60,000 people is encompassed in the book. Buy your copy now and celebrate the memory of the exhibition and Porirua's Friendly City relationship with Bamiyan.

(CNN) -- NATO officials said Monday they have sent a team to investigate an incident in central Afghanistan where troops thought they were battling militants, but instead may have exchanged gunfire with Afghan police.

The operation, which took place Sunday in Daikundi province, led to the death of three Afghan police officers and wounded three others, the International Security Assistance Force said.

NATO troops were conducting a patrol in a village when they came across nine armed people who were setting up what "appeared to be an ambush position," the force said in a statement.

The service members called in aerial support.

Later, troops determined the air strike may have been carried out against an Afghan police team, the force said.

"While we take extraordinary precaution while conducting operations to avoid friendly casualties, it appears innocent people may have been mistakenly targeted," said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, the director of the force's Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center director.

NEILI (NNI): About 60 percent of state institutions are operating in central Daikundi province without having buildings of their own, costing much to the country's budget, the governor said. "Officials of these departments operate from rented places, the rent of which range from 15,000 to 25, 000 afghanis per month," Qurban Ali Uruzgani said. "Twenty-two out of 37 state bodies have no buildings of their own," he said, adding the government had to pay a lot of money in rent for these buildings. Hajj and Islamic Affairs department is one of many operating in rental buildings. "The current building for which we pay 15,000 afghanis a month is not big enough to house all the staff," head of the department, Shiekh Mohammad Essa Taqadussi said. He said he had raised the problem with the ministry concerned who came up with the promise to construct a building for his department next year. Residents complain that provincial departments changed buildings with time to time, creating problems for them. "Almost every year, provincial departments change locations and you have to wander for days to find their new locations," said Mohammad Ali, a resident of Shahristan district.

A lifetime ago, during a six month journey in Afghanistan, I passed the spectacular site of Bamiyan, shown in this photograph, on my way into the Hindu Kush. This was long before the three enormous statues of Buddha, carved into the sides of cliffs, were destroyed by the Taliban on the grounds that they were an affront to Islam.

A two-day visit did not make this hippy-tourist an expert — but the impact of that site has lived with me ever since. The statues could only have been created by one of humanity's most ancient civilizations — and yet that cultural and social legacy is hardly ever mentioned in contemporary media coverage of the country.

It is welcome news, therefore, that a project to create a virtual museum of Afghan culture has been launched in Paris by an independent producer, Pascale Bastide. The celebrated and visionary architect Yona Friedman has agreed to to design and "build" a virtual structure that will enable access to Afghan collections which are now physically scattered in many museums and private collections around the world. Every art object will have its own geographic, ethnological and historic information; a panoramic table will situate these objects in the larger context of European, Mideastern and Asian civilizations. There will be also a special pavilion offered to Afghan people to deposit their own archives.

"My fundamental idea about architecture is that we are overbuilding" comments Friedman; "earth is over occupied. A museum, from this point of view, doesn't need to have a building." Rather than attempt to fill the cavity left after the demolition of the giant statues with a new buillding, his idea is to use that space as a kind of grid, or promenade, to present the online exhibits.

Another collaborator in the project, Michael Barry, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, states that "several moments of mankind's fate and creativity were sealed on what is today Afghan soil — and the world needs to see that".

Sunday, January 9, 2011

A YOUNG Afghan couple want asylum in Australia after their marriage sparked a bloody tribal war, tit-for-tat kidnappings and intervention by US Special Forces and President Hamid Karzai.

A bloody tribal war has erupted over the marriage of a young Afghan couple. Picture: AP Source: HWT Image Library

They now fear her family is trying to hunt them down to kill them to preserve her family’s so-called honour.

Their problems started 10 months ago in Oruzgan province, where most Australian troops are based, when 20-year-old Massoma ran off with her lover, a member of the Hazara tribe, which has been persecuted by her tribe, the Pashtuns, for centuries.

“If my family finds me, they will cut me into pieces because I married a Hazara boy without their permission,” Massoma said.

She said they lived from day to day, sleeping no more than one night in any house, in fear they would be found and then slain.

“We were not expecting any of this. It was never on our mind. This man took my heart. He had a kind face, good colour and beautiful skin. That’s why I ran away with him,” Massoma said.

It was four months after fleeing her family in a village in Khas Oruzgan district that her family found out where she was.

Her husband, Younus, 22, went to her family to try to broker a peace deal, asking whether they wanted money – an offer he said they refused.

“They said, ‘We want the girl, you and your family’. They wanted us all, just for killing.”

By then, news of the marriage was causing ripples through the district. Fighting between Pashtuns and Hazaras flared with, by most accounts, at least two people killed and 300 families forced to flee their houses to escape the violence.

The Pashtuns kidnapped a teenage Hazara girl, Mahgul, and rushed her to Kandahar province. The Hazaras retaliated, taking seven Pashtun men hostage.

Perhaps realising the issue could escalate into a potential tribal war, US Special Forces, which are the only foreign military in the area, intervened.

Locals said the US military rescued Mahgul from Kandahar and brought both girls back to their base in Khas Oruzgan.

Word spread around the community that the Americans had two local women on the base, fertile propaganda for the Taliban.

“I knew (then) that I had to get them off my base as fast as possible,” said the Special Forces captain, who, under US military policy, cannot be named.

He arranged a shura, or gathering, to bring the warring sides together. That led to another shura, where agreements were forged for the violence to cease, the hostages to be released and delegations from each tribe to be sent to Kabul to ensure the peace was lasting.

President Karzai met the delegation, which included tribal leaders, MPs and the president’s chief tribal adviser.

The matter was close to their hearts, given Massoma was a member of their Pashtun sub-tribe, the Popalzai.

After 41 days of talks, the two sides recently returned to Oruzgan unable to reach agreement. The sticking point: Massoma refused to attend.

“We don’t trust them. I swear on the Holy Qur’an they will kill us both,” she said.

Oruzgan’s police chief Juma Gul agreed that Massoma was “in danger because her brother and father are taking this issue very seriously”.

He confirmed that violence because of the marriage had led to two deaths, the displacement of 300 people and 11 hostages being taken, all of whom he said were now released.

Adding to the intrigue is a claim by the Pashtuns that Massoma was married before meeting Younus and that she needs to divorce him.

“That’s a complete lie,” Massoma said.

The US Special Forces captain said that in his discussions with Massoma’s mother, she didn’t mentioned her daughter was already married, adding that the supposed first husband never appeared.

The Pashtun delegation’s leader and Karzai’s tribal adviser, Jan Mohammed Khan, said that until the couple came to Kabul the matter would remain simmering in the province and any move to give asylum to the couple would merely inflame the issue, leading to further conflict.

“If they come to Kabul and if they are happy, we will say go. Go and be happy together,” he said, adding it was vital that she appear to get divorced from her alleged first husband.

Massoma said she doubted the pledge.

“We just want to find a peaceful place, a quiet place where no one can say anything to us,” she said.

“We want nothing else, just peace.”

Younus said only a new life in another country would ensure their safety.

“We want to be taken out of Afghanistan.” he said.

“Australia, America, wherever, we just want to leave Afghanistan.”

Speaking through an interpreter, Younus said the couple had good relations with Australian soldiers in Oruzgan province.

That, he said, had motivated their interest in Australia being their first choice for a new home.

“It is a peaceful country, I think, where they don’t kill people because they married someone,” he said.

“Their soldiers are helping us in Oruzgan, but they know of our situation and they know we will die here because of our marriage.

“If we have children, we don’t want them to live like us.

“During the night in one place, during the day in another place, all the time.”

The couple requested their surname not to be used and their picture to not appear on the internet because they wanted as few people as possible in Afghanistan to know their identity.

“We are on guard the whole time,” Younus said.

“This is not a proper life.

“We request from the Australian people, or whoever, to please us.”

The US commander of Australian forces in Oruzgan, Col. Jim Creighton, has taken an interest in the couple’s case.

Late last year he told the Sunday Herald Sun he had serious fears for Massoma’s future and he supported any move to get the couple out of the country.

To apply for asylum in Australia, the couple would face a precarious journey through Pashtun-dominated areas of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Ghazni before making their way to Kabul.

They would then have to travel east through the Khyber Pass to the Pakistani capital Islamabad because the Australian Embassy in Kabul offers no consular assistance to Afghans.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

For the first time rivals in the domestic market, steel giants Sail, Tata, Essar, RINL and the Jindal Group, are coming together to jointly bid for iron ore assets and to explore building a steel plant in war-torn Afghanistan.

At a meeting today, the Mines Ministry promised the steel producers “all possible assistance” to facilitate their entry into the “difficult” country.

The Ministry of External Affairs is closely coordinating with the Mines Ministry on the modalities of bidding for mining rights in the Hajigak mines in the Bamiyan province, 130 km west of Kabul.

Afghanistan is estimated to be sitting on iron reserves of 1.8 billion tonnes in Hajigak alone, and is issuing an open tender for multiple exploration concessions. The selected bidder will be granted mineral concessions under the Afghan Mineral Law, 2010.

There are potential coking coal reserves near the Hajigak mines, which the Hamid Karzai government hopes will enthuse companies to set up integrated plants.